Metaglossia: The Translation World

28th International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography

1 - 4 July 2024

University of Pretoria

Pretoria

South Africa

Please, note that the deadline for the submission of abstracts for the conference is Tuesday, 30 April 2024. Please, see website (www.afrilex.co.za) for the format in which abstracts must be submitted. 

Call for papersMODERN

Date(s)

31

MAY

2024

Subjects

• Sociology
• Ethnology, anthropology
• Language
• Geography
• History
• Representation
• Political studies

Lieux, mots et objets de l’exil : des récits intimes aux constructions collectives

*  *  *

Published on Wednesday, April 24, 2024

ABSTRACT

Cette journée d’étude vise à approfondir notre compréhension des enjeux liés à la transmission transgénérationnelle de la mémoire de l’exil et aux rôles des différents acteurs dans les champs politique, éducatif, artistique et intellectuel dans la construction de ces récits mémoriels et de leurs différentes formes de diffusion, y compris à travers l’art. Cette rencontre mettra l’accent sur la question de juxtaposition, voire de la concurrence des mémoires dans l’espace public. De manière plus concrète, la journée se concentrera sur les lieux, les objets et les mots de l’exil, ces derniers compris comme le langage, les traces matérielles et les constructions discursives provenant autant des pouvoirs publics, des acteurs sociaux et des récits familiaux et qui contribuent à désigner ou à invisibiliser, mais aussi à façonner ou déconstruire les exils, les représentations des exilés et les expériences de l’exil.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Présentation

Cette journée d'étude vise à approfondir notre compréhension des enjeux liés à la transmission transgénérationnelle de la mémoire de l’exil et aux rôles des différents acteurs dans les champs politique, éducatif, artistique et intellectuel dans la construction de ces récits mémoriels et de leurs différentes formes de diffusion, y compris à travers l’art.

Elle s’inscrit plus largement dans le cadre du projet de recherche et création « Bonjour fantôme » porté par la Compagnie de théâtre drômoise Le Centre imaginaire, l’Université Grenoble Alpes et le Centre du patrimoine arménien (CPA) de Valence. Celui-ci s’articule autour de l’écriture et de la préparation à la mise en scène d’une déambulation théâtrale sur la mémoire intergénérationnelle des rapatriés d’Algérie et d’un travail pédagogique en forme d’ateliers de recherche documentaire et création de récits avec les étudiants de Valence.

Notre journée d’étude constitue l’un des trois volets de ce projet et permettra d’interroger la fabrique des récits, leurs transmissions et représentations. Il s’agira notamment de questionner, avec les outils des sciences humaines et sociales, les aller-retours entre le récit intime et les constructions collectives (récit national, histoire dite « officielle », récit des acteurs, récits marginalisés, non-récits).

Dans une perspective à la fois historique et contemporaine, cette journée d’étude se veut interdisciplinaire et transversale, invitant des chercheur.es d'horizons disciplinaires variés et travaillant sur plusieurs aires géographiques et culturelles, à partager leurs analyses avec des témoins, des étudiants et des représentants du monde artistique.

Cette rencontre mettra l’accent sur la question de juxtaposition, voire de la concurrence des mémoires dans l’espace public. De manière plus concrète, la journée se concentrera sur les lieux, les objets et les mots de l’exil, ces derniers compris comme le langage, les traces matérielles et les constructions discursives provenant autant des pouvoirs publics, des acteurs sociaux et des récits familiaux et qui contribuent à désigner ou à invisibiliser, mais aussi à façonner ou déconstruire les exils, les représentations des exilés et les expériences de l’exil.

Axes thématiques

À partir de l’une des trois entrées (lieux, mots ou objets) il s’agira d’explorer :

• les représentations et les auto-représentations qui émergent de ces expériences et, à la fois, participent de la fabrique de mémoires collectives, discours et identités,
• les enjeux actuels de la transmission des récits et le rôle des acteurs (usages publics, institutions muséales, centres d'interprétation, musées et mémoriaux, transmission générationnelle, etc.),
• la juxtaposition de mémoires dans l’espace public, en essayant de dépasser l’idée de « concurrence » et proposer une forme de dialogue social,
• la place privilégiée qui peut avoir l’expression artistique dans cette forme de dialogue, permettant de resignifier ou de “théâtraliser” les mots et les expériences.

Format des contributions

Cette journée privilégiera le partage d’expériences. De ce fait, nous appelons des communications n’excédant pas 15 ou 20 minutes, afin de laisser un réel temps d’échange. Seront appréciées les communications qui proposent une réflexion autant sur le fond que sur la forme et attentives au dialogue avec un public large.

Envoi des propositions

Nous invitons tous les chercheurs intéressés à envoyer une proposition de communication à l’adresse : Mariana.Dominguez-Villaverde@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

Les propositions doivent parvenir avant le 31 mai 2024.

Le résumé de 500-800 mots (hors bibliographie) doit être accompagné d’une notice bio-bibliographique de l’auteur avec son affiliation universitaire.

Comité d’organisation

• Akoka Karen. Sociologue et Maîtresse de conférences en Sciences politiques à l’Université Paris Nanterre. k.akoka@parisnanterre.fr
• Argaillot Janice. Maîtresse de conférences en civilisation latino-américaine à l’UGA, ILCEA4. Janice.Argaillot@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
• Dominguez Villaverde Mariana. Maîtresse de conférences en civilisation espagnole à l’UGA, ILCEA4.   Mariana.Dominguez-Villaverde@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
• Hanus Philippe. Coordinateur de l’Ethnopole « Migrations, frontières, mémoires ». philippe.hanus@valenceromansagglo.fr

En partenariat avec

• Le Centre imaginaire (Chabeuil)
• Le Centre du Patrimoine arménien (Valence)

Lieu de la manifestation :

• Campus UGA Latour Maubourg, Valence
• Centre du patrimoine arménien de Valence

Date de la manifestation

11 octobre 2024

SUBJECTS

• Modern (Main category)
• Society > Sociology
• Society > Ethnology, anthropology
• Mind and language > Language
• Society > Geography
• Society > History
• Mind and language > Representation
• Society > Political studies

PLACES

• Maison de l'étudiant Drôme-Ardèche | Centre du patrimoine arménien - 9 Place Latour-Maubourg | 14 rue Louis Gallet
  Valence, France (26)

EVENT ATTENDANCE MODALITIES

Full on-site event

DATE(S)

• Friday, May 31, 2024

ATTACHED FILES

• Appel à communication Lieux, mots et objets de l'exil.pdf

CONTACT(S)

• Mariana Dominguez Villaverde
  courriel : mariana [dot] dominguez-villaverde [at] univ-grenoble [dot] alpes [dot] fr

INFORMATION SOURCE

• Mariana Dominguez Villaverde
  courriel : mariana [dot] dominguez-villaverde [at] univ-grenoble [dot] alpes [dot] fr

#metaglossia_mundus

"The prominent literary and free expression group cancelled its awards after a backlash from nominees.

By Max Matza,BBC News

Prominent literary group PEN America has cancelled its annual award ceremony after dozens of nominated writers withdrew in protest of the war in Gaza.

The group, which is dedicated to free expression, announced on Monday that it was cancelling next week's event.

Nine of the ten writers nominated for a PEN book award had withdrawn from the contest because of its alleged lack of support for Palestinian writers.

The move comes amid a growing protest movement in the US in support of Gaza.

Of the 61 authors and translators nominated for a prize, 28 withdrew their books from consideration, according to a statement from the group.

"This is a beloved event and an enormous amount of work goes into it, so we all regret this outcome but ultimately concluded it was not possible to carry out a celebration in the way we had hoped and planned," said CEO Suzanne Nossel.

PEN America's Literary Programming Chief Officer, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, added: "We greatly respect that writers have followed their consciences, whether they chose to remain as nominees in their respective categories or not."

"We regret that this unprecedented situation has taken away the spotlight from the extraordinary work selected by esteemed, insightful and hard-working judges across all categories," she added.

A series of open letters signed by PEN nominees in recent weeks have criticised the group for allegedly choosing sides against Gaza in the war that started after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.

"In the context of Israel's ongoing war on Gaza, we believe that PEN America has betrayed the organization's professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere," said one letter signed last month by several famous writers including Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein and Zaina Arafat.

The writers argued that the group was acting as a "cultural front for American exceptionalism" and was complicit in "normalizing genocide".

Israel rejects the charge that it is guilty of genocide. For many of its citizens and supporters it is grotesque and offensive to allege that the state created after Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust is itself committing genocide.

PEN says it condemns loss of life in Gaza and has created a $100,000 (£81,000) fund for Palestinian writers.

The awards ceremony was due to be held on 29 April."

#metaglossia_mundus

"...Sixty-one authors and translators were nominated but 28 withdrew their work, according to a statement released on Monday, forcing the organization to cancel next week’s event.

“This is a beloved event and an enormous amount of work goes into it, so we all regret this outcome but ultimately concluded it was not possible to carry out a celebration in the way we had hoped and planned,” said CEO Suzanne Nossel.

The boycott emerged amidst growing tensions with PEN, with authors urging the organization to take a stronger stance on the Palestinian crisis and advocate for a Gaza ceasefire.

In the letter, PEN was accused of acting as a “cultural front for American exceptionalism” and complicity in “normalizing genocide” by failing to address the situation in Gaza adequately.

“In the context of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, we believe that PEN America has betrayed the organization’s professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere,” said a separate letter signed last month by several famous writers including Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein and Zaina Arafat.

PEN America has defended its actions, citing its recent condemnation of the loss of life in Gaza, calls for a ceasefire, and the establishment of a $100,000 emergency fund for Palestinian writers.

The awards, which celebrates voices across various genres including writers of fiction, poetry, children’s literature and drama, was scheduled for April 29 at the Town Hall in New York City."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Recently, Meta launched Llama 3, a new AI assistant designed to improve social connections, engage in conversations, and make suggestions.

It’s hard to escape the conversation around AI these days. This is why earlier this year, we listed it as one of the biggest African tech trends to look out for in 2024. And explored some of the challenges, Google is trying to address with AI on the continent. Meta (formerly Facebook) has also become deeply engaged in its AI efforts. The tech company recently launched its new feature, Llama 3, a new AI assistant designed to improve social connections, engage in conversations, and make suggestions. The Meta AI assistant utilizes real-time search results from Bing and Google and has image generation capabilities that enable users to create animations and high-resolution images while typing. It is available at meta.ai. the web version that works similarly to ChatGPT. It has also been integrated into all Meta platforms.

The Llama 3 was only available in the United States until last week, when Meta made it available in several African Nations- particularly, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The tech giant plans to expand into additional countries and languages. According to  Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, “With LLaMA 3, Meta AI will now be the most intelligent, freely available assistant.” However, the enthusiasm around this new feature remains subpar. 

Recall that last year, Meta launched Threads. It was meant to be a Twitter clone that Meta launched as a companion to Instagram, the popular photo-sharing network it bought over a decade ago. Threads gained over 50 million users on its first day, signaling that many people were excited about its launch. Unfortunately, Meta’s launch of Threads fell short of expectations. Barely a month after its launch, the app’s daily active users dropped by 80%. Mainly because users found it limiting and lacking in functionality. This disappointment fueled a lower bar for future features and products from Meta. 

However, the lukewarm reception for Llama 3 can’t be solely attributed to the failed Threads app. In 2022, Meta also garnered immense hype for its grand vision for the Metaverse, a fully immersive virtual world. The tech giant rebranded from Facebook to Meta – a new name to focus on building the metaverse. The hype surrounding the Metaverse created unrealistic expectations about its immediate applicability and benefits for users, especially in developing regions like Africa. There were conversations about the potential applications of the Metaverse in areas like education, work, and entertainment, but lacked concrete implementation plans. 

Nevertheless, Meta might be taking a different approach with this AI product. For one, instead of focusing on making it a stand-alone app, the tech giant is taking the integrated approach. Popular multimedia instant messaging app, Snapchat used the same approach. Last year, Snapchat successfully rolled out “My AI”, its ChatGPT-powered AI chatbot. This integration had a profound impact on user engagement. As of January 2024, Snapchat’s subscription reached 7 million paying users, up by 2 million since September 2023.

Meta has also been more transparent about the capabilities and limitations of the new feature compared to the initial hype surrounding Threads. Meta’s AI has several features designed to enhance user experience across Meta’s platforms. The AI assistant utilizes real-time search results to provide users with additional context and information about their Facebook feeds. This can facilitate more informed discussions and deeper engagement. It also fuels creativity with image-generation capabilities. On WhatsApp, the AI can generate high-quality images with improved text inclusion, as well as provide useful prompts for image changes. Users can access Meta AI while scrolling through their Facebook feeds, allowing them to request more information about a specific post. 

Africa, (like most parts of the world) is rapidly embracing AI. In 2022, African startups attracted over $1 billion in venture capital funding for AI-related ventures. Africa also boasts a significant talent pool for AI development, with over 40% of Africa’s population under the age of 15. Countries like Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Africa have established national AI strategies and are investing in research and development initiatives. Last year, Nigeria took significant steps in inviting scientists of Nigerian heritage and renowned global experts to collaborate on the formulation of its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. 

Meta’s AI also has an opportunity to stand out among African users. Facebook is the leading social media platform in Africa in terms of market share. Meta has more than 2 billion active daily users, with about 271 million Facebook users and a projected growth to over 377 million by 2025. Many people utilize WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram to create content and promote their businesses. Meta can also tailor its AI to address issues relevant to African users. This could be anything from language support for local dialects to solutions for information scarcity. Last month, Meta announced its plans to launch monetization features for content creators in Nigeria and Kenya, in June 2024. Its new AI feature represents another opportunity to show they’ve listened to user feedback and can create a valuable tool for its African market."

#metaglossia_mundus

"The Press Code of Ethics and Conduct available in seven of the country's 12 official languages.

By

 Quan Dambuza  -  April 24, 2024 

The Press Council of South Africa has taken a significant step towards linguistic inclusivity by making its Press Code of Ethics and Conduct available in seven of the country’s 12 official languages. Recent translations of the Press Code into isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi, Tsonga, and Tshivenda signifies the ongoing commitment to embracing linguistic diversity within the South African media landscape.

Recognizing the importance of empowering indigenous voices to share their stories in their native languages, these translations aim to facilitate inclusive engagement among South Africans, enabling them to hold the media accountable.

As the world commemorates World Press Freedom Day, there’s no better time to celebrate this milestone and strengthen collaboration towards achieving a Free Press that values linguistic diversity.

To delve deeper into the significance of linguistic diversity in the South African media landscape, the Press Council, in collaboration with the South African National Editors Forum and the Indigenous Languages Action Forum, will be hosting a webinar.

 

Webinar Details:
Date: Friday, 3 May 2024
Time: 12:30
Platform: MSTeams
Registration Link: Click here to register

 

This webinar promises to be an insightful discussion on the strides made in promoting linguistic inclusivity and the collective efforts needed to further advance this important aspect of media representation. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join the conversation and contribute to a more inclusive media environment in South Africa.

Quan Dambuza

https://pondolandtimes.co.za/

Publishing Editor at Pondoland Times and a proud member of the Association of Independent Publishers (AIP), is a digital maven recognized as the second runner-up for Mediapreneur of the Year at the FOYA Awards 2023. With a mastery of Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization, Quan is reshaping the media landscape. His dynamic leadership and commitment to excellence mark him as a force to be reckoned with, driving innovation and setting new standards in independent publishing."

#metaglossia_mundus

Choice

January 1, 2001

The first dictionary devoted to historical linguistics, the oldest scholarly branch of the discipline, this book fills a need. Most terms, laws, techniques, and processes that it defines are not listed in existing general or specialized dictionaries of linguistics. These include such tantalizing entries as "cranberry morpheme," "Dante classification," "lower-middle-class crossover," "'only-six' argument," "Northern cities shift," and "upper exit principle." Trask, a prolific author of student dictionaries in linguistics, provides clear definitions, examples, and lively commentary ranging from two lines to about half a page. He defines "pejoration," for example, as "a type of semantic change in which a word comes to denote something more offensive than formerly," and notes that "all of English 'churl,' 'villain' and 'boor' originally meant only 'farm worker,' but all have come to be insults, and much the same is now happening to 'peasant.'" The book includes a brief preface; lists of symbols, abbreviations, and tables; cross-references; and a 30-page bibliography. Although the price may seem high (a paperback edition would be welcome), the book's high quality and uniqueness make this a necessary purchase for all academic and many public libraries. J. M. Alexander; Carnegie Mellon University

 

#metaglossia_mundus

"On Friday afternoon, three professional translators participated in a panel, “The Bridge,” in Sanborn Library.By Julia Zichy

Published April 15, 2024

On April 12, Sanborn Library hosted a Q&A with three professional translators: Czech specialist Alex Zucker, Hindu and Urdu specialist Daisy Rockwell and Italian and German specialist Alta Price.

 

The event, dubbed “The Bridge,” was catered by the Nest Café and co-sponsored by the comparative literature program, the English and creative writing department, the Leslie Center for the Humanities and the Office of the Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Programs. French and Italian department chair Andrea Tarnowski organized the event, which drew around 40 students from across the College’s humanities departments.

“Planning this event has really been an education, finding out the sources for who translates what languages, what the signs of successful translation are,” Tarnowski said. 

Zucker reflected on the powerful calling he felt to become a translator, explaining that he and his fellow translators had felt an “innate responsibility” to share certain non-English texts with the English-speaking world.

“Translation is … how we can understand people from across the world who are always to some degree different from us, yet also inextricably linked to us,” Tarnowski said. “It’s another individual, another representative of another group. You have to do a form of translation to understand that individual [and] understand their experience.” 

Zucker said he most recently translated the Czech text “A Sensitive Person” by Jáchym Topol, which was shortlisted for the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development Literature Prize in 2024. 

“Each book is its own theory,” Zucker said. “It is its own world. Each time we translate a book, we essentially create our interpretation of that book.”

In 2010, Zucker won the National Translation Award for his translation of Petra Hůlová's 2002 début novel, “All This Belongs to Me,” according to Tarnowski. Zucker was awarded the honor for his excellence in translating Czech culture successfully into the English language and retaining both the novel’s literal and metaphorical meanings, Tarnowski said.

During the panel, one student said learning a language can be like “building a lego” — as one learns language by building a cohesive structure of meaning. Yilu Ren GR, who is studying comparative literature, said she appreciated this metaphor.

“As a Chinese drill instructor, I use the lego metaphor to show students how the Chinese characters are combined into one Chinese word as the infrastructure of Chinese vocabulary, which is vastly different from the English vocabulary,” Ren said. “You’re putting pieces together, but it’s an organic new entity which we’re making from the pieces.” 

Ren — who hopes to pursue a career in translation after graduating this June — asked whether the “top experts in the field” are willing to teach prospective translators the art of translation. 

“Absolutely, I would love to lecture at a university about … the art of translation, but it’s just not a luxury that I particularly have or anticipate having, at least in the coming year or two,” Zucker responded.  

According to the Dartmouth English department website, the event was held in honor of English professor Monika Otter, who died on May 5, 2023. Otter, whose scholarship focused on the use of language, worked in Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Provençal, Spanish and medieval Welsh.

Tarnowski concluded the program by emphasizing the intricacies of translation, as well as the creativity it requires.

“Translation is niche in the sense that the splashy success tends to be for the authors of a given literary piece,” Tarnowski said. “But I think that there has been over the last decade an increasing attention paid to translation as its own real craft or art as opposed to something that’s derivative. All the panelists have said here that they really make a new creation, and this creation should also be on its own terms.” "

#metaglossia_mundus

"The Association of Translators and Interpreters Ireland (ATII) and the DCU Centre for Translation and Textual Studies are holding an all-day, in-person conference on language and the law next month.

The event, entitled ‘Language and the Law: Interpreting and Translation in Legal Settings’, takes place on Friday 24 May at Dublin City University (8.15am to 5.30pm).

The organisers say that the conference will bring together legal professionals, researchers, trainers in the legal and language arenas, relevant NGOs, and language professionals.

‘Lack of regulation’

The ATII, formerly known as the ITIA, says that the lack of regulation of translation and spoken-language interpreting in Ireland has given rise to concerns about standards, lack of due process, and potential miscarriages of justice.

The conference will focus on the challenges and complex needs inherent in multi-lingual communication in three settings: garda stations, the courts, and international protection.

The event will also address the issue of legal translation in the public, private, and corporate domains, specifically in relation to risk and liability.

Training and qualifications

The conference will also discuss best practice in the training, qualifications, and work of legal translators and interpreters.

Speakers include:

• Barbara Rovan (President of EULITA, the European Legal Interpreters and Translators Association),
• John O’Shea (chair, FIT Europe),
• Professor Lorraine Leeson (Centre for Deaf Studies, TCD),
• Professor Yvonne Daly (Professor of Criminal Law and Evidence, DCU),
• James MacGuill SC, (former president of the Law Society and CCBE President),
• Wendy Lyon (solicitor),
• Dia Silverstein (solicitor), and
• Sarah Jane Aberásturi (legal translator and chair, ATII Certification SC)."

#metaglossia_mundus

"An Indigenous man couldn’t understand the court proceedings when he was charged with a crime in Texas. He was sentenced anyway. 

By Sasha von Oldershausen

May 20240

The English expression “like a deer in the headlights” has no real equivalent in Spanish. Instead of its literal translation, “como un ciervo en los faros,” which would be lost on many Spanish speakers, you might instead use the phrasal verb “quedarse pasmado” (“to stay stunned”), which still fails to capture the momentary paralysis that accompanies the subject’s bewilderment. That’s how Fidel Gutierrez-Garcia looked when defense attorney Robert Garcia spoke to him in Spanish about his case, Garcia would later testify: “like a deer in the headlights.”  

Gutierrez-Garcia, a pecan picker from a rural part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, had been charged in Texas with possession with intent to distribute more than one hundred kilograms of marijuana—a felony, punishable by five to forty years in prison. On November 30, 2021, he and three other men were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol officers while walking near Van Horn, 120 miles southeast of El Paso, carrying what the officers described as burlap sacks containing the drug. The agents transported the men and their bags to the Van Horn Border Patrol station for processing. 

The next day, two agents responsible for recovering the marijuana interviewed the men. Unable to speak Spanish, the officers called an interpretation company to facilitate their conversation over the phone. Interpreter Christian Saenz later testified, at a motions hearing in March 2022, that he could tell Gutierrez-Garcia was not a native Spanish speaker. The defendant, Saenz said, told him that he spoke a Mayan language. 

 

Gutierrez-Garcia’s mother tongue turned out to be Northern Tepehuan, spoken by some 10,000 Indigenous residents of northern Mexico. It belongs not to the Mayan family of languages but to the Uto-Aztecan family, which includes more than thirty languages spoken by Indigenous people as far north as Idaho and as far south as Nicaragua. Few linguists in the U.S. have made it their focus. One of them, Stefanie Ramos Bierge, occupies a postdoctoral position at the New York Botanical Garden, documenting ecological terms in the Uto-Aztecan language Wixárika. She described Northern Tepehuan as a fast-paced and melodic language that makes frequent use of palatalizations—when consonant sounds are softened by the tongue meeting the palate, as with the “s” in “measure.” Whereas typical English and Spanish sentences usually follow a subject-verb-object sequence, in Northern Tepehuan the object’s placement is not fixed, and often the speaker will leave out the subject entirely. 

The Story: Writer John Spong on "Six Brothers"

On the witness stand in March 2022, Saenz said Gutierrez-Garcia responded to his questions in Spanish, albeit with short replies, though the interpreter could not glean his level of comprehension. But when he translated Gutierrez-Garcia’s Miranda rights into Spanish, Saenz recalled, Gutierrez-Garcia said he did not understand.

The language barrier became increasingly problematic as the case progressed. The Western District of Texas appointed Robert Garcia—who spoke fluent Spanish—as Gutierrez-Garcia’s counsel. Garcia met with Gutierrez-Garcia at the detention center in Sierra Blanca, 85 miles southeast of El Paso, to discuss his plea. “He said very little,” Garcia testified during the motions hearing. Having withdrawn from the case in March 2022 because of health issues, he now appeared as a witness for the defense. (Garcia died later that month.) “I would talk to him for a while, and he would . . . just sort of nod his head. And then I’d ask him, ‘Do you understand what I am saying?’ He would nod his head.” Garcia continued: “I frankly got the impression right away that . . . he was nodding his head just to be polite more than anything else.”

Given the proximity of the Western District of Texas to the border with Mexico, language interpreters are in high demand. Typically, the court will supply defendants with one—if it can find an interpreter who speaks the defendant’s mother tongue. Luis Navarro, a federally certified Spanish-language interpreter for the Western District of Texas’s Pecos and Alpine divisions, spoke with Gutierrez-Garcia to determine whether he could effectively translate for him in court and found that he could not. “He does speak some Spanish, in the sense of ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ ‘[my] name,’ and that’s it,” Navarro testified at the motions hearing. Navarro informed the court that he was unable to communicate with the client and tried to help locate an interpreter who could. But he was unable to enlist one fluent in Northern Tepehuan who was willing to take the case.

After Garcia withdrew as counsel, he was replaced by Shane O’Neal, a criminal defense attorney based in Alpine, an hour north of Big Bend National Park. O’Neal, who is proficient in Spanish, said he could gather some basic information from Gutierrez-Garcia: he had a wife and child, he lived with his father-in-law, he picked pecans for work. But O’Neal believed that the language barrier would compromise the case. He filed a motion to dismiss it on the grounds that his client did not understand Spanish well enough to comprehend the proceedings against him.

“It’s a bedrock principle of our Constitution,” O’Neal told me, “that people aren’t supposed to sit through this Kafkaesque proceeding, where they are in a courtroom and a lot of things are being said but they don’t understand what’s going on, and they’re not playing a meaningful role in making really important decisions that affect both how their case unfolds and what happens to their liberty.”

Brandon Beck, a law professor at Texas Tech University, who worked for eight years as an appellate attorney at the public defender’s office in the Northern District of Texas, compared the issue of language barriers in court to the way the government protects people who are legally “incompetent” from standing trial. “They can’t participate in their own defense,” he said. 

Though the issues of competence and language proficiency are fundamentally different, the takeaway is the same: a defendant’s comprehension is essential to the due process of law. To demonstrate this point, O’Neal put Gutierrez-Garcia on the stand during the motions hearing. First demonstrating his client’s ability to understand and respond to basic Spanish, O’Neal asked him a series of simple questions—his name, his place of origin. Gutierrez-Garcia answered these in Spanish. When O’Neal then asked him questions about the crime he was accused of committing, Gutie-rrez-Garcia’s responses suggested that he understood his infraction. But as soon as O’Neal began asking questions related to the court proceedings, Gutierrez-Garcia’s comprehension seemed to hit a wall.

“Do you know what a witness is?” O’Neal asked.

“No,” Gutierrez-Garcia said.

“Do you know what a judge is?” O’Neal asked.

“Judge, yes,” Gutierrez-Garcia replied.

“What’s a judge?” O’Neal asked.

“Judge,” Gutierrez-Garcia said.

“Can you tell me who in the room is the judge?” O’Neal asked.

Gutierrez-Garcia replied, “No.”

During a recent press appearance in Eagle Pass, Donald Trump made one of his hallmark incendiary speeches, remarking on migrant traffic crossing the Texas-Mexico border. “We have languages coming into our country,” he said from the town 330 miles northwest of Brownsville. “We have nobody that even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.” The remark drew plenty of criticism that noted the obvious: “It cannot be the case both that someone speaks a language and that no one speaks that language,” wrote a Washington Post columnist. 

But in the sense that some of the rare languages spoken by migrants are barely spoken in the United States, Trump’s not wrong.“There are people who come here and no one speaks their languages,” said O’Neal. 

For the few interpreters in the U.S. court system who are fluent in rare Indigenous languages, the task is a formidable one. For one, they must contend with the regular challenges of interpretation, making choices about what to prioritize—intonation, logic, sentence structure—within the overall transmission of meaning. They also face unique challenges in working with languages that lack cultural touchstones common to English and Spanish, said Dale Taylor, a Nebraska-based court-appointed interpreter of a Uto-Aztecan language called Tarahumara, spoken by some 70,000 in the state of Chihuahua. “They don’t understand a court system. They don’t understand a judicial system,” Taylor said of the Tarahumara people. “They don’t even have a word for a ‘law.’ ” 

Bierge noted that the same can be said for Northern Tepehuan. “Legal terms are not going to be in the language,” she said. The only interpreter Garcia and Navarro were able to find—a missionary who had interpreted for two previous cases—declined to take on Gutierrez-Garcia’s case, citing the difficulty of explaining legal concepts to Northern Tepehuan speakers.

 

The work of the interpreter within these Indigenous languages requires creativity and contextualization. Using the example of a “term of probation,” Taylor said of Tarahumara, “there’s no word for ‘probation.’ So you have to say, ‘You’re going to be watched. It’s kind of like you’re going to be watched for five years.’ ”

Emiliana Cruz is a Mexico City–based linguistic anthropologist and an interpreter of Chatino, spoken by about 45,000 people in the state of Oaxaca. She said communicating legalese to clients in U.S. courts can be an arduous process, often requiring lengthy explanations of abstract concepts. “I often find that the judges roll their eyes like, ‘Okay, when are you going to be done talking?’ ” Cruz said. Some judges will assume that her clients’ ignorance of legal matters equates to stupidity. 

Cruz’s two sisters, who’d also worked as interpreters, decided they didn’t want to continue; it was too emotionally taxing. “I do it because I feel that it is the only way someone can understand their rights in their own language,” Cruz said. “I think that is something fundamental for all of us, right?” 

Gutierrez-Garcia’s motion to dismiss the case was denied. U.S. district judge David Counts, of the Western District of Texas, concluded that Gutierrez-Garcia had “a sufficient understanding of the Spanish language to proceed to trial with a Spanish interpreter.” While Counts acknowledged the defendant’s right to an interpreter competent in his primary language, he wrote that the issue ultimately required a balance of the defendant’s rights against the “economical administration of criminal law.” 

Gutierrez-Garcia pleaded not guilty but sought to minimize his penalty by accepting responsibility for the crime in what is called a “stipulated bench trial.” There, the parties agreed that Gutierrez-Garcia had possessed marijuana with the intent to distribute it and that he reserved his right to an appeal, where he could challenge the district court’s finding that he was proficient in Spanish. He was sentenced to 24 months in prison. 

In August 2022, O’Neal filed an appeal with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which accounts for a high number of court hearings involving interpreters in the United States, and argued that the district court had abused its discretion. But a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit deferred to the district court’s decision. “True, there is evidence in the record that Gutierrez did sometimes struggle to understand legal concepts,” the opinion stated. It then framed Gutierrez-Garcia’s confusion as an issue not of language but of education. “The record indicates that Gutierrez never attended school.” 

The circuit judges concluded that because Gutierrez-Garcia was able to acknowledge having committed the crime, “any deviations from ideal communication” were minor enough that they would not be considered fundamentally unfair. In other words, as long as Gutierrez-Garcia was able to admit responsibility, his lack of comprehension of the proceedings or the arguments being made about his sentencing were considered
unimportant. 

Courts over the years have ruled that the right to an interpreter is necessitated by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which grant certain rights to those accused of crimes, including the right to know the charges and evidence against them. The Court Interpreters Act, enacted by Congress in 1978, turned those court decisions into statute law, stating that a court should use a certified interpreter provided that a defendant “speaks only or primarily a language other than the English language.” 

“If we all agreed he couldn’t speak Spanish, and we all agreed there wasn’t an interpreter there for his particular Indigenous language,” said Beck, “then there is no way to have any of these proceedings without violating the Sixth Amendment and probably the Fifth Amendment . . . and the Court Interpreters Act.” Nevertheless Beck was unsurprised by the ruling. “The Fifth Circuit has evolved over time [into] a court that has a lot of emphasis on law and order,” he said. “The Fifth Circuit today is often unsympathetic to the plight of the criminal defendant.” 

When Trump took office, in 2017, he had the opportunity to fill more than one hundred judicial vacancies, including seventeen across the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Six of the seventeen judges in the Fifth Circuit are Trump appointees. “Anytime one third of the court changes with one president—which should never happen—it’s going to shift the ideological perspective of the court,” Beck said. 

All three of the judges on O’Neal’s appeal were Trump appointees, including Texas judge Don Willett, whom Trump also considered as a potential Supreme Court nominee.

Gutierrez-Garcia’s case was not the first, nor the last, of its kind to appear before the Fifth Circuit. In United States v. Herrera-Quinones (2022), the Western District of Texas court provided a Tepehuan man with an interpreter fluent in his native language before determining that the defendant’s Spanish was sufficient. The defense argued that the Tepehuan
interpreter should not have been dismissed. Its request for reversal by the Fifth Circuit was also denied. 

 

In 2023 criminal defense attorney Matthew Kozik’s client Jose Manuel Ayala-Alas, a Tepehuan speaker who was provided with a Spanish interpreter, was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison for smuggling marijuana across the border, even after an expert testified that Ayala-Alas spoke Spanish at a second-grade level. “You have a federal court turning a blind eye to language issues,” said Kozik, who filed for an appeal and is awaiting a ruling. “This is not just some small-town Hudspeth County state court. This is a federal jurisdiction.” 

As his last resort, O’Neal petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to hear Gutierrez-Garcia’s case, invoking the Court Interpreters Act, as well as the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. The odds were against him. Fewer than one percent of the cases heard by the high court involve indigent criminal defendants. “These are people who are poor, who can’t afford to pay, who are utterly helpless, who are pitted against the most powerful institution in the world—the United States of America,” Beck said. 

Gutierrez-Garcia served eighteen months in federal prison. His current whereabouts are unknown; O’Neal has been unable to contact him. In January the Supreme Court responded that O’Neal’s petition had been denied. He had expected the result but was disappointed. Still, he takes solace in the fact that it won’t change Gutierrez-Garcia’s fate significantly. By the time of the high court’s action, he had already served his time.  

This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “When a Defendant Gets Lost in Translation.”"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Looking to fulfill those pesky All-University Core Curriculum credit requirements? Well, there are now more options for students who are still in need of arts and humanities credits. Colorado State University students registering for the fall 2024 semester are now able to sign up for the newest foreign language class BS 420: Swearing Across Languages.

Seriously: CSU to offer new class Swearing Across Languages

Hana Pavelko, Collegian Columnist

April 16, 2024

 

Looking to fulfill those pesky All-University Core Curriculum credit requirements? Well, there are now more options for students who are still in need of arts and humanities credits. Colorado State University students registering for the fall 2024 semester are now able to sign up for the newest foreign language class BS 420: Swearing Across Languages.

 

After a trial run this semester with a few students, Swearing Across Languages will finally be available to be taken by all CSU students. This newest course offers a comprehensive look at swearing and curse words in several different languages, including Spanish, German, French, Mandarin and Russian. These languages are some of the most commonly spoken in the world, so students can use their newfound language skills almost anywhere.

“Our teaching team thought content learned in a typical foreign language class isn’t really helpful or practical in the real world,” said Puta Mierda, an assistant professor in the department of languages, literatures and cultures and the instructor for Swearing Across Languages. “I mean, when is, ‘What’s the weather today?’ ever going to come up in a casual conversation?”

“We’re looking to incorporate other languages into the course in the future. We’re really hoping to include American Sign Language because there are lots of fun gestures there.” –Puta Mierda, BS 420 instructor

In this new course, students will learn practical vocabulary sure to come up in any conversation: swear words. Studies have found that over 82% of conversations with a college student will include at least five different swear words. This course takes advantage of the natural inclination of college students to swear and teaches them how to say their favorite swear words in different languages.

“This is by far the most applicable language class you’ll ever take,” said Mist Ficker, one of the students from the trial run this semester, who will be returning as an undergraduate teaching assistant for the course in the fall semester. “The content they teach you is stuff you’ll actually need to know if you decide to visit another country.”

The course will spend approximately two weeks on each language and introduce students to a variety of curse words that are expected to come up most in daily conversation. The teaching team has cultivated a long list of vocabulary words found to come up in most conversations.

“We have found that students are actually more engaged because this is the content they actually want to learn in a foreign language course,” said Chier Bordel, a member of the teaching team.

While the course currently features five different languages, the teaching team is hoping to expand their cursing proficiency and include more languages.

“We’re looking to incorporate other languages into the course in the future,” Mierda said. “We’re really hoping to include American Sign Language because there are lots of fun gestures there.”

The teaching team of this newest foreign language class said they are looking forward to introducing this class to the CSU student body. They hope it will give a better insight into the cultural aspects of different countries while also providing students with a broader range of vocabulary they can use in practical situations."

#metaglossia_mundus

UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson is part of a research team that has discovered where people who are bilingual store language-specific sounds and sound sequences in their brains.

By Anne Brice

April 16, 2024Share link

 

Follow Berkeley Voices, a Berkeley News podcast about the people and research that make UC Berkeley the world-changing place that it is. Review us on Apple Podcasts. 

See all Berkeley Voices episodes.

 

 

 

For the first three years of Justin Davidson's childhood in Chicago, his mom spoke only Spanish to him. Although he never spoke the language as a young child, when Davidson began to learn Spanish in middle school, it came very quickly to him, and over the years, he became bilingual.

Now an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Davidson is part of a research team that has discovered where in the brain bilinguals store language-specific sounds and sound sequences. The research project is ongoing.

This is the final episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to the first two episodes: "A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish" and "A language divided."

 

For the first three years of Justin Davidson's life, his mom, Mindy, spoke only Spanish to him. But then she stopped. When Davidson learned Spanish in middle school, it came very quickly to him, and over the years, he became bilingual. Now, he's an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. 

Courtesy of Justin Davidson

 

Read the transcript for Berkeley Voices episode 123, "One brain, two languages."

Anne Brice: This is Berkeley Voices. I'm Anne Brice.  

[Music: "Selena Leica" by Blue Dot Sessions]

For UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson, Spanish has always been a part of who he is.

Justin Davidson: My grandparents on my mother's side enrolled my mom in Chicago's first pilot program of Spanish-English bilingual education. I don't know why, but they did, because there was no cultural, linguistic, any kind of connection there.

So my mom, from K-12, kindergarten to 12th grade, was part of a single cohort. So the second graders above her, no. And the kindergartners below her, no, when she was in first grade. She was in that one cohort, where from K-12, all of their curriculum was in English and in Spanish.

And so with me, my mom spoke to me in Spanish exclusively until I was about 3, and then she stopped and reverted to English.

Anne Brice: His dad didn’t speak Spanish, and few people in their community did, so it just got easier to not be the only one speaking a different language other than English.

Justin Davidson: So did I speak Spanish as a child? No. I understood some things. But then, when I learned Spanish formally in school starting in, I think, sixth or seventh grade, everything came to me quite quickly.

Anne Brice: Wow. I wonder if it was stored in your brain…

Justin Davidson: So I have plenty to say about that. (Laughs)

Anne Brice: Yeah?

[Music fades out]

Justin Davidson: There are linguists now, now that we have such advanced technology to do fMRI, to do PET scans, to do all sorts of imaging of the brain, we can study so many facets of language, and where and how language is processed in the brain.

Anne Brice: Davidson is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. When he teaches a course in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, he always shares with his students a 2014 study in which researchers looked at a group of people who were born in China and adopted by French-speaking families before the age of 3.

This group of international adoptees grew up in France as monolinguals, speaking only French. Unlike French, Chinese dialects have multiple sets of different words distinguished orally only by their pitch or tone.

Justin Davidson: So the question is, how do different speakers process tone, process pitch in the brain, if they've been exposed to a language where that's very linguistically meaningful, relative to languages like French, where, you know — au revoir, au revoir, au revoir (said in different tone and pitch) — same word, no difference.

[Music: "Trois Gnossiennes" by Blue Dot Sessions]

Anne Brice: When the adoptees were older — between 9 and 17 years old — linguists played pseudowords, or fake words, for them while they were in fMRI machines. These words contained tones that are present in Mandarin and Cantonese and in several other Chinese dialects.

And what researchers found was that for these adoptees, electrical activity in their brains was present in the left hemisphere, where most of language is processed. So their brains recognized the tones as related to language.

But for French speakers with no exposure to Chinese, electrical activity was only in the right hemisphere, which has general cognitive acoustic capabilities. So their brains recognized the tones as just sound, not connected to language.

Justin Davidson: And so the idea is that the brain at a very early age has primarily linguistic faculties on the left hemisphere of the brain. And so speakers whose languages use tone or pitch in a linguistically meaningful way, those are the areas of the brain where pitch and tone are processed.

And for everyone else in the world (laughs) whose pitch and tone in their language isn't linguistically meaningful in that way, other general, sort of, cognition and acoustic processing areas of the brain are what's used.

Anne Brice: In fact, electrical activity in the adoptees' brains was the same as it was for native Chinese speakers.

So even though the adoptees, after they moved to France, had no subsequent exposure to Chinese and no conscious recollection of that language, their brains had effectively stored it — for years, if not indefinitely.

Justin Davidson: So the brain is very, sort of, geographically organized according to the languages that we're exposed to as children. It's fascinating.

[Music comes up, then fades out]

Anne Brice: With advanced brain imaging technologies, researchers have learned a lot about where and how language is processed in the brain — and they continue to learn more.

Since 2020, Davidson has been part of a research team at UC San Francisco that’s working with bilinguals to map where exactly in the brain particular sound features of different languages are processed and stored.

To conduct their research, the team is studying brains of people undergoing surgery to treat certain brain conditions, like seizure disorders or chronic migraines.

Justin Davidson: One of the medical solutions for that is to implant, physically touching the brain, a piece of sort of mesh electronic wiring that allows the person with a remote control to send electronic energy, shocks to the brain to calm it down.

Anne Brice: The first phase of the project began in 2011 with two collaborators — principal investigator Edward Chang, the chief of neurosurgery at UCSF, and Keith Johnson, then a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, who’s now emeritus.

Justin Davidson: So their original work, with a National Institutes of Health grant, was working with monolingual English speakers. Those were the patients they were getting that required the surgery.

So again, they were looking at what specific areas of the brain process, i.e., where is electrical energy sent, when you hear certain sounds?

I was brought into the picture because the type of patients that Dr. Chang was getting — there was this big influx of bilingual patients that weren't English speakers. They were English-Mandarin. They were English-Spanish.

And so the thinking was: Gosh, you know, we've already studied these really interesting components of how speech sounds are processed, where geographically they're processed in the brain, in English.

Now we can look at bilinguals. Now we can see, are monolinguals different from bilinguals, in that way? Or for bilinguals, now that they have two languages, is the way that they process sounds in those two languages the same, or different? And what about a language that they've not heard before?

So all sorts of new, really interesting questions about where and how the brain processes speech sound with this group of bilinguals. The majority were Spanish-speaking, so that's where I was invited to join the team. (Laughs)

[Music: "Sprig Leaf" by Blue Dot Sessions]

Anne Brice: During certain types of brain surgery, a patient is awake so neurosurgeons and their teams can make informed decisions in real time about how a procedure will affect a patient's cognitive ability and language. For clinical studies like this, medical professors and students are present during the operation to coordinate the surgery alongside language tasks.

And in this study, they play audio recordings of sets of speech stimuli that Davidson helped design. The set includes all sorts of word combinations that differ in how acoustically similar they are across the two languages, and also whether they share a similar meaning.

Justin Davidson: So for example, we have ropa. And that is not a rope. That is clothes.

Anne Brice: Or soup and sopa, which sound similar and have the same meaning in both languages.

[Music fades out]

Some of the words in the set have sounds that are acoustically similar in both languages, like "esss." But there are also sounds that are only present in one of the languages. So in English, for example, a lot of words start with sp, like Sprite or Spain. But in Spanish, these words start with an e, so it's Esprite or España.

Justin Davidson: And so what's been going on, then, at UCSF is that we have these patients that are, again, bilingual in English and Mandarin and English and Spanish, and we're playing to them these words and these snippets of sounds from both Spanish, English, Mandarin and other languages that they're not familiar with.

Anne Brice: In doing this, the researchers are trying to answer where bilinguals store the sound inventories of their two languages, among other research questions.

[Music: "Waiting at the Hem" by Blue Dot Sessions]

Although the research is ongoing, there are some new findings from the study that the team has documented and presented at conferences.

Justin Davidson: What they found was that when it came to the location of electrical activity for hearing the sounds across the two languages, that was the same. So the sounds in English and the sounds in Spanish were all, relatively speaking, overlapping on top of each other.

But there was a very striking language-specific difference when it came to the sequences of sounds.

So when Spanish-specific clusters of sounds were just listened to, right — these people are just sitting there, they're hearing this, they don't have to talk. They're just listening.

 

This is sort of simplifying a bit, but there's the Spanish location for the Spanish clusters. And then there's the English location for the English clusters. They were teased apart very readily.

[Music fades out]

 

Anne Brice: So this discovery means that for bilinguals, the clusters of sounds unique to each language, so sounds specific to Spanish and sounds specific to English, are stored in separate areas of the brain, millimeters apart.

Justin Davidson: So that's to say, when you learn a new language, acquiring new sounds might be using the same sort of neural networks that are used to have acquired all the sounds that you've gotten prior.

But when you have enough exposure to the language to learn the patterning of the sounds, which sounds tend to appear together, that information, the brain is attuned to that, recognizes that pattern, and stores it separately based on the different languages. That’s fascinating.

[Music: "Gondola Blue" by Blue Dot Sessions]

The brain is an incredible pattern detector, and one of the patterns that it very clearly detects and physically — electrophysically — responds to is not just sounds in language, but their co-occurrence.

Children that are exposed to two languages from birth will have different sound systems and grammatical systems than other kids that were exposed to one language at birth and another language later in life. And it's not, again, to say that one is inherently better or worse than the other, but it's that it's different. It's different.

Anne Brice: Our language and the way we speak it, he says, is a reflection of our past and present linguistic and social environments. And neurologically, our brains, too, reflect our sociolinguistic experience.

I'm Anne Brice, and this is Berkeley Voices. This is the last episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the United States. You can find links to the episodes in our show notes.

Berkeley Voices is a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs at UC Berkeley. If you like what we do, please tell a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We also have another show, Berkeley Talks, that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.

[Music fades down and ends]

 

#metaglossia_mundus

"One worker has had enough of her boss expecting her to translate for Spanish-speaking patients without paying her extra for providing the service.

In a viral video that has been viewed over 808,000 times, TikToker Chena Guillen (@chenaguillen) explained why she is no longer willing to budge on the issue.

"When I got this job, I let them know like, 'Hey, I speak Spanish. I'm fluent,'" the TikToker began her on-camera rant. "But I wanna be paid for translating."

Her employer, however, didn't believe they would need her to act as a translator and refused to increase her pay.

"Oh, that's cool, but we don't need that skill," they allegedly responded. "We don't get a lot of Hispanic patients."

Guillen believes the expectation that she will translate for free as a native Spanish speaker is unfair because others who attend college to learn the language often get higher pay.

"If a white person goes to school and they learn Spanish, they are getting two or three dollars more than the rest of us," she argued.

So, she always makes it clear to potential employers that she will not act as a translator unless she is paid to do so, and they rebuff her offer, saying they don't need an employee with the skill. Nonetheless, a situation always arises where her boundaries are tested.

"Fast forward, I'm working, and they get Spanish customers, and he [her boss] is like, 'I need you to translate Che,'" she said.

"I need you to pay me," she retorted.

Her employer continued to refuse to pay her for utilizing her skills, but she didn't budge.

"Then I look bad 'cause I'm not helping my own people," she said. "But if I don't put my foot down, then I'm not gonna make money. I'm not gonna do what I need to do to take care of my kids."

 

Ultimately, she recommended her employer use Google Translate if they aren't willing to pay workers to act as translators.

In the comments section, many viewers could relate to Guillen's dilemma and applauded her decision to stand firm.

"The 1st time I refused to translate for someone, I felt so bad that I cried but I had to stand my ground with my employer," one commenter wrote.

"I'm with u 100% it's a skill and needs to be $$$$$," a second said.

"Yessss same girl but if we don’t value our worth no one will," another commented.

"I feel you, smart girl," a further commended..."

#metaglossia_mundus

 

Raphaëlle Macaron “Nos différences ont fait notre force”

 

Publié  23/04/2024 Par  La Rédaction

L’illustratrice libanaise Raphaëlle Macaron séduit tous azimuts avec sa ligne claire mâtinée de pop culture acidulée et teintée d’ironie.

Los Angeles. La Cité des anges a toujours attiré Raphaëlle Macaron de par “sa scène musicale dynamique et son accès à la nature”. La jeune femme de 34 ans y a débarqué presque par hasard après un séjour à Mexico, sans aucune envie de rentrer à Paris. Depuis, elle y passe trois mois par an. “Un lieu idéal pour mes projets personnels, mes explorations musicales et l’élaboration de YHM, actuellement basée ici”, déclare l’artiste qui dessine pour cette marque de vêtements et d’objets, un projet initié par Patrick Gemayel et destiné à soutenir les associations locales du Moyen-Orient.

Prisée des médias internationaux, on trouve régulièrement ses illustrations dans The New York Times, Society Magazine, Libération ou The New Yorker. “Très engagée contre toute forme de discrimination quelle qu’elle soit, racisme, islamophobie, antisémitisme, homophobie ou misogynie”, elle dessine aussi pour Amnesty International, Médecins sans frontières, Helem (ONG libanaise qui défend les communautés LGBTQ+) ou Skoun (ONG libanaise pour la réinsertion et la réhabilitation des personnes addicts). Ce qui ne l’empêche pas de travailler pour Gucci, Nike ou Foot Locker.

Après un master en bande dessinée de l’Académie libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Raphaëlle quitte Beyrouth à 24 ans. Elle intègre ensuite le collectif et magazine Samandal, qui lui ouvre les portes d’une communauté de dessinateurs du monde arabe : “Une source d’inspirations et de motivation incroyable pour moi, même si j’y suis moins active par manque de temps.” En 2020, sort son premier roman graphique, Les Terrestres, un road trip vert et tragicomique sur les routes de France, un état des lieux de la transition écologique en duo avec Noël Mamère : “Nos différences ont fait notre force”, une devise qui lui sied parfaitement. Actuellement, elle planche sur une fiction qui se déroule au Liban, un projet de longue haleine pour lequel elle avait imaginé un contexte de crise exagérée avec des personnages un peu loufoques. “Mais depuis 2019, j’ai été rattrapée par l’actualité de mon pays qui traverse une période exceptionnellement difficile, entre crise économique, l’explosion du 4 août 2020 et la menace de guerre… Je l’ai mis en pause en 2020, car mon histoire me paraissait soudain grossière au vu de la réalité.” Le travail a repris l’an dernier, animé par le besoin urgent de mettre en scène les émotions compliquées liées à son pays.

Loraine Adam

#metaglossia_mundus

Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies (Petrarch in Global Translation, Vienna) Publié le 23 Avril 2024 par Marc Escola (Source : Marion Kratochvill)

Petrarch in Global Translation: A Genealogy of Western Love (PGT) is a collaborative humanities project across languages and national borders that is investigating the foundational conception of Western love as codified by Petrarch’s Canzoniere. PGT is funded by the NOMIS Foundation: 

https://nomisfoundation.ch/projects/petrarch-in-global-translation-a-genealogy-of-western-love/

The project will explore the extent to which Petrarchan norms are useful and adaptive models both within and outside of the Western tradition from which they arose. By re-engaging with the practice of Petrarchism, which has spawned centuries of literary production and critical reception, PGT proposes a simultaneously theoretical and experimental, historical and systematic approach to identifying a dominant poetics of love. To realize the project goals, we are looking for a 

Postdoctoral Fellow

This is a two-year position that will be based at the University of Vienna, and the appointment will begin September 2024. The ideal candidate should have Italian literature, culture or history as one of their primary fields of research, although candidates in related fields may also be considered, provided they have a strong knowledge of Italian and English. There is no teaching associated with the postdoctoral position, but the fellow will be asked to conduct research on several specific questions to support the PGT research agenda as a whole, in addition to pursuing their own research project related to our general topic. 10% of the postdoctoral fellowship’s time will be dedicated to scholarly coordination and programming. Among the topics [but not limited to these only] that the fellow might be asked to research are the following: 

• The global impact of Petrarch through an investigation of how Petrarch’s Canzoniere circulated throughout the world
• Traces of Petrarchanism in modern art/culture (music, painting, cinema)
• Material for the project website, i.e. adding resources, critical essays, sources or integrating tools
• Literature review on contemporary thinking about the relationship between love and sexuality/gender identity, e.g. how social scientists are writing about/studying love today
• The reception, reproduction, or “travelling” of Petrarchan forms across genres and media
  Future topics that may arise from our research 
    

Job Requirements

• Completed doctoral/PhD studies in Italian/Romance Studies, Italian/European Renaissance History, or related disciplines
• Research competence and initiative proven through publications
• Excellent knowledge of Italian and English
• IT skills
• Team player and very good social and communicative skills
• Basic skills and some experience in project management
   

Your application includes

• Letter of Intent
• Academic CV with list of publications and doctoral certificate
• Summary of your research interests including a short proposal of the project you intend to pursue with PGT (max. 500 words)
• Names and contact details for two letters of recommendation
   

Please send your application in a single document/PDF until May 15, 2024 to: 

pgt.romanistik@univie.ac.at

 

Any questions about the application should be addressed to:

marion.kratochvill@univie.ac.at

• Responsable :
  Marion Kratochvill
• Url de référence :
  https://nomisfoundation.ch/projects/petrarch-in-global-translation-a-genealogy-of-western-love/

 

#metaglossia_mundus

"Dr Hilary Brown will be leading a project over 2024-25 which will explore what feminist translation means in practice in the twenty-first century.

Published 22 April 2024

Dr Brown has been awarded an AHRC Networking grant, together with her co-investigator Dr Olga Castro (University of Warwick/Barcelona), and will be establishing a "Feminist Translation Network" which will bring together researchers, practitioners and educators to discuss feminist approaches to contemporary literary translation in English. The Network will ask questions such as: What is feminist translation (e.g. how does it differ - or not - from translations by women/of women or from queer translation/gender-inclusive translation)? Is feminist translation a matter of identity or a matter of practice? What are the goals of feminist translation and whom is it for?

The Network will address these themes at a series of free public events held over 2024-25, beginning with a translation 'slam' and roundtable discussion at the Birmingham Literature Festival in October 2024.

The Network's activities will be overseen by a steering group which includes former DoML staff member Dr Gaby Saldanha.

Dr Hilary Brown

Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Brazilian authorities announced this week that the Constitution of South America's largest country, originally penned in Portuguese, would be translated into the languages of the indigenous tribes in a move to fully bring that part of the population into the rule of law, Agencia Brasil reported.

Pursuant to the Living Indigenous Language in Law program promoted by the Office of the Attorney-General alongside the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the text will also become available in Guarani-Kaiowá, Tikuna, and Kaingang, the most widely spoken indigenous tongues, it was explained.

Reaching a common understanding between indigenous peoples and lawmakers is the main objective of the plan. To ensure cultural integrity, the program should invite indigenous leaders and community members to help draft texts that take into account the interaction with indigenous legal systems. Community members will also be trained to gain better access to national and international laws and public policies.

The new materials will be disseminated among traditional communities, lawyers, representatives of all three branches of power, councils, universities, and nonprofit associations working on public policies and the rights of indigenous people.

Meanwhile, Brazilian native tribes are holding their annual protest in Brasilia through April 26 to protest against the so-called time framework whereby indigenous peoples only have the right to the lands they were occupying by Oct. 5, 1988, when the new Brazilian Constitution was adopted.

This thesis was deemed unconstitutional by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in September last year. However, it was subsequently incorporated into legislation through a bill passed by the National Congress which was vetoed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva but reinstated through a Congressional veto override.

The protest features a comprehensive agenda comprising debates, report presentations, marches to the Three Powers Square, and various political engagements at the National Congress, including solemn sessions, public hearings, and meetings. Additionally, cultural performances and exhibitions showcasing handicrafts and indigenous art representing all Brazilian biomes will be staged.

The Free Land Camp is also to condemn a recent surge in violence targeting indigenous communities as well as an increase in suicides among native Brazilians. According to the National Articulation of Indigenous Peoples, citing a study by the Proteja Collective, six indigenous leaders were murdered between December last year and early 2024. A turnout of over 6,000 indigenous individuals is expected at this year's event.

(Source: Agencia Brasil)"

#metaglossia_mundus

"The Cabinet of Ministers of Latvia unanimously and without debate approved new education rules, which provide for the gradual rejection of studying Russian as a second foreign language in schools from 2026.

This is reported by Delfi.

Schoolchildren who chose Russian as a second foreign language by September 1, 2025 will be able to continue studying it until they graduate from high school (until the ninth grade). Then, as a second foreign language — starting from the fifth grade — it will be possible to choose only the official language of one of the countries of the European Union, the European Economic Area or a language regulated by intergovernmental agreements on education. The Russian language is not included in them.

"This is good news! Finally!" Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silinia commented on the new rules.

According to her, the Russian language will gradually disappear from schools, and children will learn the languages spoken in the European Union.

Currently, Latvian schoolchildren learn English as a first foreign language from the very beginning of their education, and a second foreign language begins to be learned from the fourth grade. Theoretically, children can study French, German and other European languages as a second foreign language anyway, but in practice Russian is most often taught, since there are not enough teachers of other languages in schools.

According to the Ministry of Education and Science, Russian is taught as a second foreign language in almost half of Latvian schools. In some educational institutions, alternatives are not even offered.

The gradual rejection of the Russian language is justified by the fact that it is still necessary to train teachers of other European languages, which are currently in short supply.

Schoolchildren who do not want to learn the Russian language can refuse it already this year. The Minister of Education of Latvia Anda Čakša said that in the plans, from the 2026-2027 school year, children will learn a second foreign language not from the fourth, as now, but from the fifth grade. Instead, in the fourth grade, hours will be added to study English.

Students who will enter the fourth grade on September 1, 2025, will not study a second foreign language at all in the 2025-2026 academic year.

During the public discussion of the draft law, many objections were received from individuals against the plan of the Ministry of Education. Within two weeks, more than 300 appeals were received from individuals and representatives of various associations, most of which are directed against the gradual abandonment of Russian as a second foreign language in secondary schools. All these objections were summarized in a table and added to the draft decision of the government, that is, the ministers had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with and take note of this opinion. However, in the table opposite the objections, in the end it was noted "not taken into account".

The main reasons for the disagreement came down to the fact that "children cannot be restricted in learning their native language" and they should decide for themselves which language they should learn. Opponents of the new rules also emphasized that abandoning the Russian language for political reasons is unacceptable."

#metaglossia_mundus

Apr 23, 2024

"Large Language Models are set to change the manufacturing industry forever by acting as a conversational gateway between humans and machines.

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Andre S. Yoon

Chief Executive Officer, MakinaRocks

Kyoung Yeon Kim

Marketing Manager, MakinaRocks

OUR IMPACT

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Manufacturing and Value Chains?

 

 

• Large Language Models are set to disrupt industries the world over. For manufacturing, they will bridge potential knowledge gaps and manage databases that humans could not.
• They will serve as a conversational gateway between humans and machines, allowing businesses to unlock previously unknown potentials.
• Large Language Models are required to fully reflect the complex, domain-specific needs of the manufacturing industry.

We stand on the brink of a new era, fueled by the rapid advancement and integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today, the manufacturing industry is poised to undergo a transformation unlike any it has seen before.

While the transition from manual labor to automated processes marked a significant leap, and the digital revolution of enterprise resource management systems brought about considerable efficiencies, the advent of AI promises to redefine the landscape of manufacturing with even greater impact.

Central to this transformation are Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI technologies. These tools are significantly lowering the barrier to entry for subject matter experts and field engineers who traditionally have not been involved in coding or "speaking AI." The impact of this should not be underestimated. Up to 40% of working hours across industries could be influenced by the adoption of LLMs, a significant shift in workforce dynamics.

AI, and particularly LLMs, will have a profound impact on the manufacturing sector. The opportunities are vast — but there are potential challenges, too.

The impact of AI on manufacturing

AI is reshaping the very fabric of manufacturing, transforming traditional automation frameworks and aligning them with ISA-95 standards at every level. This new era of automation heralds increased productivity and the emergence of innovative manufacturing practices, all driven by AI.

The integration of hardware automation, spearheaded by advances in robotics, combined with software automation led by AI, is crucial to unleashing the full potential of these innovations.

Yet, despite these advancements, AI remains an alien concept to many within the manufacturing industry. Subject matter experts, the seasoned engineers who intuitively understand machinery and production processes, find themselves at a crossroads. As these experts retire, their invaluable knowledge and insights risk being lost, underscoring the need for AI's integration into manufacturing to bridge this gap.

LLMs: The gateway between humans and machines

LLMs are set to revolutionize the manufacturing industry by serving as a conversational gateway between humans and machines, enabling assets and machinery to "communicate" with humans.

By interpreting vast amounts of manufacturing data, LLMs facilitate informed decision-making and pave the way for the future use of natural language in production and management.

This symbiotic relationship between AI and humans enhances the intelligence and efficiency of both parties, promising a future where AI's impact on manufacturing is more transformative than the industrial revolutions of the past.

In this future, AI amplifies human expertise, creating a collaborative environment where decision-making is faster, more accurate and informed by insights drawn from data that was previously inaccessible or incomprehensible.

 

An industrial LLM encapsulating all layers of the manufacturing plant, from machinery to AI-driven analytical solutions, will be able to manage and optimize entire operations.Image: MakinaRocks

The integration of AI into manufacturing extends beyond simple automation, encompassing areas like control optimization. By analyzing vast datasets, AI enhances production efficiency and reduces costs through the optimization of manufacturing processes. This not only smooths operations but also minimizes resource waste.

Reflecting the importance of these technological advancements, research shows that 75% of advanced manufacturing companies prioritize adopting AI in their engineering and R&D strategies. This commitment underscores AI’s key role in the future of manufacturing, guiding the sector toward more efficient and sustainable practices.

In the not-too-distant future, AI will be able to manage and optimize the entire plant or shopfloor. By analyzing and interpreting insights at all digital levels—from raw data, data from enterprise and control systems, and results of AI models utilizing such data—an LLM agent will be able to govern and control the entire manufacturing process.

How to make AI in manufacturing a success

For AI and LLMs to truly transform manufacturing, they must first be tailored to specific domains. This customization requires not only connecting to the right data sources but also developing tools for effective prompting that align with the unique challenges and processes of each manufacturing sector.

Domain specificity ensures that AI solutions are relevant, practical and capable of addressing the nuanced demands of different manufacturing environments. This demonstrates the need for industrial LLMs (or domain-specific LLMs) for proper and accurate application of LLMs in manufacturing.

In addition to domain-specific tailoring, the widespread and successful adoption of AI in manufacturing necessitates standardized development and operational processes. Establishing common frameworks and protocols for the implementation of AI technologies is critical to ensure compatibility, interoperability and security across different systems and platforms.

Standardization also facilitates easier adoption and integration of AI technologies, helping manufacturers to navigate the transition to AI-powered operations with greater ease and efficiency.

Maximizing the potential benefits of AI

The AI transformation in manufacturing is set to usher in an unprecedented level of innovation. To keep pace with this rapid advancement, manufacturing leaders must make timely and informed decisions.

Preparing for this shift means implementing organization-wide AI transformation initiatives to standardize the AI development and operations processes and laying the foundation to fully leverage the benefits AI offers.

As the manufacturing industry stands at the cusp of this new era, the integration of AI promises to bridge the gap left by retiring experts and propel the sector towards a future of unparalleled efficiency and innovation.

The journey towards AI-enabled manufacturing is complex and fraught with challenges, but the potential rewards make it an endeavor worth pursuing."

#metaglossia_mundus

What We Lose When Languages Die

By Ross Perlin

May/June 2024Published on April 23, 2024

The world’s 190-odd nation-states are home to 7,168 “living languages,” according to the latest figure from Ethnologue, a widely used language database. The implications of this enormous disproportion are obvious, given that few governments support more than one or a handful of official languages. The vast majority of languages represent communities that are much older and more localized than nation-states, and the mismatch between states and languages is at least one driver of a planet-wide shift in human consciousness: the staggering loss of linguistic diversity.

Linguists consider at least half of all human languages to be endangered...

#metaglossia_mundus

Par Pascale Elbaz TRADUCTRICE ET ENSEIGNANTE-CHERCHEUSE

Les récents progrès des logiciels de traduction automatique neuronale et des intelligences artificielles génératives poussent de plus en plus de lectrices et lecteurs à se satisfaire de résultats approximatifs et médiocres. Il devient donc urgent que les traductrices et traducteurs fassent mieux reconnaître leur indispensable travail de post-édition pour garantir la qualité des textes.

 

La traduction automatique (TA) a fait des progrès fulgurants ces dernières années, avec l’apparition de la traduction automatique neuronale (TAN) puis celle des intelligences artificielles génératives, créant des espérances folles et des peurs réelles.

 

Espérances d’une communication multilingue aisée et bon marché, d’une diffusion multilingue de la science, d’une facilitation des échanges avec des communautés parlant des langues disposant de peu de ressources. Peurs d’une transformation rapide des services de traduction avec diminution du nombre de professionnels pour un volume de traduction toujours croissant, s’accompagnant d’une double perte : perte de qualité des traductions produites et perte de revenus pour les professionnels qui se verraient remplacés par des machines.

Certains langagiers préfèrent parler de prétraduction automatique plutôt que de traduction automatique, soulignant à la fois que le texte est produit par un moteur entraîné sur des algorithmes à la conversion automatique de texte d’un langage à l’autre, que ce produit n’est qu’une étape, et que le texte qui en sort nécessitera un travail qui, loin de s’apparenter à une relecture du texte d’arrivée (texte en langue cible), nécessitera un aller-retour entre celui-ci et le texte de départ (texte en langue source) que seuls les traductaires sont capables de mettre en œuvre.

L’utilisation de réseaux de neurones rend l’opération plus efficace : le moteur de traduction code le texte de départ, fait une série d’opérations algorithmiques à partir des ensembles de textes bilingues sur lesquels il a été entraîné, puis ces opérations sont décodées en un texte dans la langue d’arrivée. Toutefois, un certain travail sur le texte ainsi généré est souvent nécessaire..."

#metaglossia_mundus: https://aoc.media/opinion/2024/04/23/de-la-traduction-a-la-post-edition/

 

Après s'y être d'abord opposé, le ministère de l'Éducation nationale, accepte que les énoncés du brevet soient proposés en breton ou en basque.

Nicole Belloubet fait machine arrière et autorise la traduction des sujets du brevet en langue régionale
Par Paul-Henri Wallet
Publié le 23/04/2024 à 11:21, mis à jour le 23/04/2024 à 11:21
La ministre de l’Éducation nationale a finalement autorisé la traduction des sujets du brevet en langue régionale.
Après s'y être d'abord opposé, le ministère de l'Éducation nationale, accepte que les énoncés du brevet soient proposés en breton ou en basque.
Les écoles basques et bretonnes ont obtenu gains de cause. Dans un courrier rendu public, ce vendredi 19 avril par la sénatrice du Finistère Nadège Havet, la ministre de l'Éducation nationale, Nicolle Belloubet indique que les sujets du brevet 2024 pourront finalement être proposés en langue régionale.

Avant d'opérer ce revirement le ministère de l'Éducation nationale, s'était opposé à cette mesure. Dans un courrier du 20 novembre 2023, la DGESCO (direction générale de l'enseignement scolaire), en effet, avait ordonné que « quelle que soit la langue de composition, les sujets et les documents d'accompagnement des sujets ne sont pas traduits en langue régionale et demeurent en français. » Les élèves restaient libres de composer en breton en basque, ou en corse mais les consignes devaient être les mêmes pour tous les élèves français.

Une décision qui avait eu beaucoup de mal à passer pour les défenseurs des langues régionales. « Nous avions obtenu une dérogation pour que les sujets soient traduits depuis une vingtaine d'années et cela se passait très bien,» explique ainsi Yann Uguen, le président de Diwan, un réseau d'école immersif en langue bretonne. «Alors quand nous avons appris au cœur de l'hiver, que cette dérogation n’avait plus cours nous avons été très étonnés», poursuit-il.

«Egalité pour tous les élèves»
Dans son courrier, la DGESCO justifiait sa position en invoquant une nécessaire « égalité de traitement pour tous les élèves ». Mais pour les partisans du breton, le résultat aurait plutôt été l'inverse. « Si nos collégiens doivent tous traduire l'énoncé avant de pouvoir commencer l’épreuve, ils sont discriminés par rapport aux autres », affirme Yann Uguen. « Le risque, c'est qu'une partie d'entre eux se découragent et en viennent à écrire en français pour ne pas perdre de temps. »

Le président du réseau Diwan précise par ailleurs, que seuls les sujets d'histoire sont concernés par la décision de la ministre. « Dans les autres matières, les énoncés ont toujours été en français, mais cela ne pose pas de problème pédagogique car ils sont moins denses et les élèves peuvent plus facilement passer d'une langue à l'autre dans ces disciplines. »

Pour obtenir le revirement de la ministre, plusieurs acteurs se sont mobilisés. « Lors de ses derniers déplacements dans les territoires concernés, la ministre à toujours eu des questions à ce sujet », rapporte ainsi Yann Uguen. Par ailleurs, des questions orales au gouvernement ont été formulées par des parlementaires et de nombreux courriers ont été envoyés rue Grenelle pour attirer l'attention du ministère.

Après ces nombreuses sollicitations, Nicole Belloubet a décidé de lâcher du lest. Dans sa lettre, la ministre indique que le premier courrier envoyé par la DGSCO était « antérieur aux annonces du choc des savoirs [l'ensemble des mesures arrêtées par Gabriel Attal pour améliorer le niveau à l'école NDLR]. Elle précise que « ce nouveau cadre », qui induit « des modifications profondes et progressives » du brevet l'amène « à décider de reconduire, pour cette session 2024, les modalités de traitement en langues vivantes régionales des sujets du DNB et de leur traduction. » Avec cette décision, la locataire de la Rue de Grenelle entend vouloir « maintenir une stabilité du cadre d'évaluation ».

Modifier la constitution
Le président du réseau Diwan est finalement satisfait d'avoir été entendu. Il s'inquiète cependant qu’un nouveau courrier remette en cause les acquis des écoles régionales. « À l’heure actuelle, le cadre juridique de nos écoles repose uniquement sur une circulaire, explique-t-il. Nous restons donc à la merci d'une décision administrative édictée, par un gouvernement hostile à notre pédagogie. Pour protéger notre statut, il faudrait que la scolarité immersive en langue régionale soit inscrite dans la constitution. »

Yann Uguen a conscience qu'un tel changement de la norme suprême n'est pas à l'ordre du jour. Il espère cependant que sa mesure pourrait «prendre le train des révisions constitutionnelles engagées par l’exécutif». « Il y a eu l'IVG récemment, et il pourrait y avoir bientôt un projet d’autonomie de la Corse, nous pourrions peut-être avoir notre tour ensuite», poursuit le président de Diwan..."
#metaglossia_mundus

"IQNA-L'adjoint du cheikh Al-Azhar a souligné dans ses propos qu'il n'est pas possible de traduire avec précision le Saint Coran dans d'autres langues.

Mohammad Al-Dawaini,  adjoint du directeur d'Al-Azhar, a déclaré lors d'une conférence au centre d'Al-Azhar : « l'Islam est confronté à une campagne féroce des ennemis afin que les peuples des pays occidentaux ne comprennent pas la vérité de l'Islam.

Nous vivons dans un monde où les civilisations se battent non seulement avec des armes, mais aussi avec des idées et des connaissances. La réalité est que la traduction des textes islamiques connait encore de nombreux problèmes. La traduction des textes religieux est l’une des traductions les plus difficiles.

Ce n’est pas comme la traduction de textes littéraires, sociaux, politiques ou économiques, facilitée grâce aux informations que le traducteur a acquises au fil du temps. La traduction religieuse nécessite une compétence, une précision et beaucoup de soin, et est une grande responsabilité.

La traduction des significations du Saint Coran dans d'autres langues, est un domaine où les problèmes de traduction apparaissent clairement. Il y a des phrases, dans le Coran, qui ne peuvent pas être transférées dans d'autres langues.

De plus, certains termes de la pensée islamique, notamment dans la jurisprudence, n’ont pas d’équivalents et pour cette raison, sont traduits « de la façon la plus proche », dans la langue cible, afin que le lecteur puisse comprendre le sens en arabe ».

4211698"

#metaglossia_mundus: ????!!!!!

 

Cazals : Rencontre autour de la traduction en littérature ce samedi à la librairie Vent d’Autan

Elle se déroulera ce 27 avril à 16 h. 

La 3ème rencontre du cycle autour de la traduction en littérature organisée par la librairie Le Vent d’Autan se déroulera ce samedi 27 avril 2024, à 16 h (à la librairie).

Autour du livre Les quatre filles du docteur March, paru en traduction aux éditions PKJ et Éditions Gallmeister, Natalie Zimmermann et Janique Jouin-de Laurens confronteront ainsi leurs traductions publiées à celles des élèves du Lycée Léo Ferré de Gourdon, dans le cadre d’une joute de traduction. Véronique Béghain, traductrice, animera ces échanges où chacun pourra parler des choix de traduction qu’il a faits des passages proposés. Cette rencontre permettra de présenter le métier de traducteur-trice et de saisir le rapport intime que chacun-e entretient avec le texte d’origine.

Librairie Le vent d’autan

Place Hugues Salel

46250 Cazals

Tel : 09 81 91 29 26

Mail : librairieleventdautan@gmail.com

 

#metaglossia_mundus

"After mainland Chinese official media outlets started calling the 2024 Zodiac the Year of “Loong” instead of the Year of the Dragon to advance the State's political goals.

This year's zodiac symbol has been retranslated from 'dragon' to 'Loong'

Written byOiwan Lam

Posted 22 April 2024 10:41 GMT

After mainland Chinese official media outlets started calling 2024 “the Year of Loong” instead of the Year of the Dragon, the word “loong” and its homophones have become a popular meme among Hongkongers on social media, representing the government's shift toward nationalistic policies and language.

The Year of “Loong”

This year, major Chinese state-affiliated media outlets have abandoned the term “dragon” and adopted the word “loong”, an uncommonly used transliteration of the Chinese word 龍 (dragon in English), to refer to the 2024 Chinese Zodiac. The alteration was later explained in numerous media commentaries, including the Chinese state-sponsored China Daily.

These commentaries argued that in Chinese culture, the image of the mythological animal is very positive and divine, while its Western counterpart is a negative “monster”. They also contended that the mistranslation of the Chinese word into “dragon” is a cultural distortion and misinterpretation.

In recent years, China has started using standard Putonghua pinyin to replace the English translation of Chinese words in its public signs in major cities in order to symbolize the country's cultural confidence and strength under leader Xi Jinping. For example, “road” was replaced by “lu” and “museum” by “Bó wù guǎn” on public signs — leading to confusion among foreigners who do not speak Putonghua:

The argument of state-funded media outlets won popular support from mainland Chinese online nationalists. Some even suggested that “loong” should become a standard English term to refer to a Chinese dragon. On X, formerly Twitter, many pro-China social media influencers, such as Shanghai Panda, also promoted the new term to non-Chinese speakers:

However, there were also disagreements and pushback.

Nick Kapur pointed out on X that in Chinese mythology, the dragon is associated with natural disasters:

China Digital Times highlighted a comment circulated on WeChat by Chén-fēng lao-yuàn (晨楓老苑) criticizing the official argument:

Discursive power is important, but it should come from strength, not volume; from respect, not insistence. In the case of Loong and Dragon, the ambiguity comes not from the Chinese and Western signification of the dragon symbol, but from deliberate misuse [of the symbol]. It is China's image that determines whether the Chinese dragon is good or bad, not the other way around.

Linguistic confusion

Moreover, the politically correct choice has resulted in linguistic confusion. First, it has confused the function of translation and transliteration — the process of representing a word or phrase in a different script — as pointed out by X user @languagediarya1:

“Sau pei lass pok kaai zai” is written as 收皮啦仆街仔. The Chinese words don't make sense to non-Cantonese speakers as the phrase is Cantonese slang which means “Fuck off, asshole.”

Such confusion was ridiculed by the following viral cartoon, which suggests that the translation of the English word “Dragon” into Cantonese should be 姐緊 “jie-gan”, a nonsensical term that means “sister-ing”:

Even if people accept using transliteration for the English translation of the word 龍, the romanization of “loong” still causes confusion. In the mainland Chinese standard pinyin, 龍 is romanized as “long” instead of “loong” — a transliteration originated from British missionary Joshua Marshman (1768–1837). However, most contemporary sinologists have shifted to mainland Chinese standard pinyin in recent years to avoid confusion. 

Currently, “loong” as the transliteration of 龍 is mostly used among overseas Chinese in Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia and Singapore. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s name is one such example.

Yet, this “loong” transliteration has little to do with daily interaction among overseas Chinese as the pronunciation of the word 龍 in Hokkien, a popular Chinese dialect spoken by more than 47 million people in Fujian, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, is transliterate as lêng, liâng or liông. As for Cantonese, while the pronunciation of “loong” is similar to 龍, the standard romanization is lung4 or long2 (the number represents the nine Cantonese intonations). 

The pick of the fading transliteration “loong” is likely to avoid the misinterpretation of the Putonghua pinyin “long” into the common English word “long”. Yet, it does not really facilitate cross-cultural communication. After all, English speakers often use the word “long” in their everyday expressions. 

“Loong”: overburnt, loan and alone

When Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee used the term “the year of ‘Loong’” in his welcoming address at a tourism event during the Lunar New Year, many Hongkongers raised their eyebrows as they perceived the choice of political correctness would further harm the reputation of the international city which is coined as a conduit of Western and Chinese culture.

Instead of open criticisms, some started using “loong” homophones that have negative connotations, such as 燶 (overburnt), “loan”, and “alone” on their social media posts. Even now, some still use “loong” as a hashtag for economic bad news as the Cantonese term 燶 is often used to describe losing money in the stock market:

Below is a viral image on this year's Valentine's Day depicting a dragon being left “a-loong”:

Sometimes destructive and horrific images of dragons can bring happiness and laughter to people, as suggested by Surrealhk’s Photoshop image of the Japanese dragon Godzilla:

For now, it seems the Chinese government will continue to politicize the Chinese language and its transliteration, meaning it will be a “loong” year."

#metaglossia_mundus